The DCCC usually makes mediocre ads-- or worse. They hire over-paid, overly-cautious consultants who only care about one thing: the next job they can get. The video above, however… that's a decent ad. And the DCCC started running it today-- part of a $950,000 investment in anti-Grimm broadcast ads on Staten Island and the parts of south Brooklyn that are part of NY-11 (Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, Sheepshead Bay, Gravesend, right up to the border of Midwood). I grew exactly 2 blocks from the far corner of Grimm's district-- Avenue P and East 15th Street-- and this area is nothing like the parts of the district on Staten Island and in Bay Ridge where people see the Mafia as folk heroes who will protect them from the coloreds. My sister lives on Staten Island. She told me that among her neighbors, Grimm's multiple indictments have made him more popular!In 2012, it was the new NY-11 precincts in the northwest part of the district, my old neighborhood, that swung the congressional district in a very blue direction-- from a district that supported McCain 51-48% to a district that supported Obama 52-47%, one of the biggest pro-Obama swings anywhere in the country.Grimm's campaign, though, is flailing. The GOP Establishment has cut him off as an embarrassment. He can't raise money, can't respond to DCCC attacks and is getting no help at all from the NRCC, which has written off the seat.
Mr. Grimm has been unable to respond with television advertisements of his own, after his indictments ended the flow of cash to his campaign from national Republicans. He has few paid campaign staffers-- though Mr. Molinari, 85, who helped launch Mr. Grimm’s first campaign, has said they meet regularly to discuss the race. In the last monthly filing period that campaign contributions were available to the public, Mr. Recchia raised 11 times more than Mr. Grimm, who had pulled in just $23,430, most of it from just 18 donors.Still, the congressman is a skilled retail politician who has been shaking hands and taking selfies a slew of local events all summer long, and he remains popular with many in his district. He has dismissed the charges against him as a plot by Democrats and President Barack Obama to rid the city of its lone Republican in Congress, and has offered a refrain in his social media messages to his supporters: “I’ve got your back.” That could resonate in a district that often feels at worst targeted for unfair policies like high tolls, and at best forgotten by government.
So far the DCCC has spent $332,076-- not counting the money to run the ad up top. The NRCC has spent zero. Since it's Labor Day, let me just mention that the Mafia-controlled building trades unions in NY haven't given up on Grimm this year. The NRCC is embarrassed. The building trades bosses aren't. They've given him $199,000 so far-- $10,000 each, for example, from the Plumbers/Pipefitters Union, the Painters & Allied Trades Union, the Operating Engineers Union, the Carpenters & Joiners Union. Normal, non-Mafia affiliated unions have given Democrat Domenic Recchia $59,500.My favorite possible outcome of the NY-11 race would be for Grimm to win-- from a prison cell. He's likely to go to jail on the charges but Staten Island definitely deserves to go down in history for having reelected a Mafia stooge who was already in prison. Recchia is as worthless as Grimm and there's no reason on earth for anyone to vote for him. But NY-11 isn't the only place where New York's grotesquely corrupt political Establishment is suffering from paroxysms of discontent and dislocation. This morning Fred Dicker reported in the Post that Cuomo is weighing dumping his handpicked right-wing running mate, Kathy Hochul. First watch this video:The NY Times endorsed Tim Wu, which not even someone as remote from the street as Cuomo can ignore. Dicker isn't some kind of ridiculous Post scandal monger. He's the paper's state political editor and is very well-connected and knows what he's talking about. This is what he's talking about:
Gov. Cuomo’s political operatives are eyeing a "painful scenario" to dump Kathy Hochul, a moderate upstater, as the governor’s running mate for lieutenant governor amid growing signs that leftist law professor Tim Wu is picking up momentum in the Sept. 9 Democratic primary.Such an action could be needed because a Wu victory would result in a Cuomo/Wu ticket on the Democratic line in the November election but potentially disastrous Cuomo/Hochul tickets on the Working Families, Independence, and Women’s Equality lines, where no primaries are slated.Under the state Election Law, votes for a Cuomo/Hochul ticket in November would not be added to the tally for the Cuomo/Wu ticket, potentially costing Cuomo hundreds of thousands of votes.Cuomo would have until Sept. 16 under the election law to swap Wu for Hochul, using a technique that would allow the former Buffalo-area congresswoman and lawyer to be nominated instead for a judgeship, according to an expert on legislative election law."This is the painful scenario being reviewed by the Cuomo people, who realize that there is an outside possibility that Wu could win the primary," said a source close to the Cuomo campaign.Wu won the surprise endorsement of the New York Times as well as other left-of-center groups last week as they criticized Hochul’s past opposition to state aid for illegal aliens and her 100 percent rating from the National Rifle Association.…Cuomo campaign operatives, nervous about the Sept. 9 primary, privately concede that he would suffer considerable national political damage if Fordham University Professor Zephyr Teachout, the governor’s hard-charging "progressive" challenger and Wu’s running mate, gets more than about 30 percent of the vote."About 30 percent will be a huge embarrassment to Cuomo on the national scene and would reinforce the sense that progressives don’t like or trust him," said a prominent Democratic activist.Several activists told The Post they believed that Teachout, who has been endorsed by the state’s second-largest public employee union, would hit 30 percent.
UPDATE: No Prison Time For Grimm Before Nov.My dream of seeing Staten Island reelect a Mafia hoodlum while he's in prison was shattered today when U.S. District Judge Pamela Chen announced that jury selection in the first of Grimm's many trials will begin Dec. 1. This trial is for the 20 indictments on all the baby-charges-- tax evasion, fraud and conspiracy… that kind of stuff. The more intense criminal stuff is still being investigated by the FBI.
